I've discovered that this is the first novel by Robert Gott that I've read. THE HOLIDAY MURDERS was shortlisted for Best Fiction on the Ned Kelly Awards, but somehow I just never got around to reading it. As THE PORT FAIRY MURDERS is a sequel to that title, and the plot takes in some unfinished business from it, it is probably best to read them in order, but obviously I haven't done that. There are plenty of hints about what happened in the first title, and the characters are well developed.

There are some interesting features to the plot of THE PORT FAIRY MURDERS: the historical setting of 1943 which is not only during the Second World War, but also a time when women were not generally employed by Victoria Police except as secretarial staff; the rural location of the murder site; it allows the author not only to explore the restrictions imposed by the war, but attitudes in the general population.

The author has left plenty of room for a sequel, for while we know who committed the various murders, there is still some unfinished business. ( )

The sequel to "The Holiday Murders", the first book in this series, this novel picks up shortly after the events of that first story. The main characters, Inspector Titus Lambert, and his two subordinates, Constable Helen Lord and Sergeant Joe Sable, are still suffering the effects of those brutal events that occurred at the end of "The Holiday Murders".
Two threads run through the story. One follows George Starling who escaped from police clutches in the earlier book. He is both a hunter and the hunted. Although the police are looking for him, George wants to wreck vengeance on Joe and Helen for being a major part in the downfall of the Nationalist group and his mentor.
The second strand, involves domestic lives and tensions in a Port Fairy. Families and small towns have always been more complicated than it seems on the surface.

The author paints an authentic picture of what life was like in Melbourne and country Victoria (Port Fairy and Warrnambool) during the second World War. The attitudes of people towards women in the workforce and well-established prejudices especially religious tensions, between Catholics and Protestants and attitudes towards intellectual disabilities, homosexuality and
The characters in this story are interesting and the historical and political setting is very well established. The tension around whether or not George Starling will succeed is compelling. The Port fairy murders take quite a while to happen and the final dénouement interesting.
It is a good read but better if you have read the first installment and there is certainly enough left for more about the burgeoning Homicide Department of the Victorian Police. ( )

The first book, THE HOLIDAY MURDERS marked a change in series, but not style, for author Robert Gott. Much of this author's crime fiction writing has concentrated on historical time periods, in particular around the second world war.

This reader was very impressed with the first book. It introduced a range of new characters in the newly formed Homicide department of Victoria Police, from Inspector Titus Lambert (and his wife), Detective Joe Sable and Constable Helen Lord. Events from that book physically and mentally scar Joe Sable, scars that he carries forward, along with a serious threat, into THE PORT FAIRY MURDERS.

Linking the small seaside town of Port Fairy on Victoria's Coastline with the team back in Melbourne are elements of the very real threat that the villain George Starling poses, as he hides away there, plotting and planning finishing the job he started in the first book.

"George Starling hated jews, women, queers, coppers, rich people, and his father. He loved Adolf Hitler and Ptolemy Jones. Hitler was in Berlin, a long way from Victoria, and Jones was dead. He knew Jones was dead because he stood in the shadows and watched the coppers bring his body out of a house in Belgrave. One of those coppers had been a Jew named Joe Sable and that meant one thing, and one thing only - Joe Sable's days were numbered."

Which he nearly manages to achieve late one night in Melbourne. The second connection emerges when a brutal double murder happens in Port Fairy, which allows Lambert to put Sable and Lord into that town, the investigation and inadvertently the firing line yet again.

There are many strong elements from the earlier book that carry forward to this one. Gott draws a very detailed and yet entertaining portrait of war-time Country Victoria and Melbourne. The example of Lord's difficulties as a woman in the police force nicely illustrates the attitude of workforce participation prevalent at the time. The behaviour of the branches of an established family in Port Fairy a particularly telling demonstration of the outcomes of snobbery and favouritism.

"She didn't have a much higher opinion of her niece. She was pretty, but insufficiently interested in her appearance to do herself justice. Her voice was irremediably awful, beyond surgical help because it wasn't just a question of adenoids. Timbre, tone and pitch were all off."

"Her feelings about her nephew, Matthew, were, if not extreme, at least extravagant. She adored him. He was beautiful - others less smitten admitted to his being good-looking, nothing more - and his decision to live within minutes of her had raised her flagging spirits."

Even the way that the main suspect in the double murder in Port Fairy is an intellectually handicapped man, gives the author the opportunity of drawing out the way that some society and families reacted to people with disabilities at the time.

The action, however, does move backwards and forwards between the investigation in Port Fairy and the threat to Joe Sable posed by George Starling. Unfortunately this leads to one of the major downfalls of THE PORT FAIRY MURDERS in that the two elements never seem to quite jell, spending instead a lot of time competing for attention. Whilst there's something inevitable about the double murder investigation (and not just because the reader knows the truth right from the outset), the potential for Starling to succeed also seems quite high. That threat is constantly being shifted around in focus to allow for much rushing backwards and forwards between Melbourne and Port Fairy, and a series of rather odd coincidences that are a tad heavy handed in execution.

Frankly the Port Fairy component didn't seem to contribute an awful lot to the overall story. The threat of Starling, the investigation of his activities, the further exploration of Sable's Jewish background and the affect that will have on him as well as the expansion of the bone-headed behaviour of so many towards women in the workplace were really involving. The complications of Lord's personal life and how her work impacts on her home life, particularly when Sable needs somewhere to live were particularly engaging. That background, and the search for Starling had some sense of genuine threat and menace to them, and it felt like they could have supported a larger concentration. At the very least, there was something more to say there than some daft old lady with a fetish for a loser nephew to the exclusion of her obviously well-meaning niece, all of which came with a sense of overwhelming inevitability. By the end of this book it was hard to ignore the big question, which was why somebody hadn't done away with many of that family a lot earlier.

Having said all of that, there's enough here to make you wonder if THE PORT FAIRY MURDERS is "the difficult second book" that's got some positioning of characters sorted out, kept a major element of threat in play, set up some ongoing relationships and provided a path into "the series moves forward third book".

This reader certainly hopes so. For the elements of THE PORT FAIRY MURDERS that did disappoint, these are still such an interesting group of characters, and the historical background is so informative, you'd hope there's a further outing in the works.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-port-fairy-murders-robert-gott-0 ( )

This novel is very much linked to its predecessor which probably explains why the author has included a helpful summary of the first novel at the beginning of this one. When it opens the main characters are all still reeling from the brutal events that ended the first book, two in particular are struggling with the physical and psychological damage inflicted on them by Nazi sympathisers. One of the people responsible for that brutality is George Starling who eluded police then and is now set on finishing off the job he started and generally causing havoc and death. To that end he is on the trail of Joe Sable, a sergeant with the newly formed Victorian homicide squad and a man Starling didn’t quite manage to kill in the first novel.

In a completely separate thread we meet a Port Fairy family. There’s an elderly lady with a mentally disabled brother and their adult niece and nephew. In a manner that resembles the Golden Age of detective fiction the novel takes the time to establish these characters and their small community with its religious and social tensions before ripping apart the family with a brutal death or two. Although it is an interesting thread in its own right there is no real connection between this story and the hunt for George Starling, aside from the fact that the homicide squad are involved with both investigations, which gives the book a slightly disconnected feel.

The characters are a real strength of this novel. The way Joe Sable is dealing with his feelings of guilt over the events depicted in the first novel combined with his dawning awareness of what it means to be Jewish make him compelling. One of his colleagues is Helen Lord who is struggling to be taken seriously. Although her boss recognises her skills and intelligence almost everyone else thinks she is good for not much more than making cups of tea. We see more of Helen outside the office in this installment and learn something of her family history and see her complicated relationship with her mother. I also found the family at the heart of the Port Fairy thread engaging in a ‘my family’s not so bad after all‘ sort of way.

I really like the way Robert Gott writes and puts together a story. The combination here of using an interesting time period in our history, filling it with compelling characters and telling a story that unfolds in unexpected ways makes THE PORT FAIRY MURDERS an above average read. I’d recommend the book to anyone but do think it would make for a more satisfying reading experience after having read the first novel in the series.